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You're at work, in the middle of tackling a project that requires
intense focus. You're on a roll. You're in the zone. And then
your phone rings, snapping you out of your flow. It's just a
telemarketer, so the call takes less than a minute. But then you
check your email, your Facebook, look at your Twitter feed and
decide you must text your friend.

When you finally get back to work – two, five, maybe 10 minutes
after the initial interruption – it's harder to focus. You pause
to check your email again, peruse news sites and look at cute
kitten pictures on Instagram. Consequently, you find yourself
making more mistakes.

If that sounds familiar, you're far from alone. Unfortunately,
our brains are finely attuned to distraction and even the
briefest ones have the power to decrease our productivity, a
recent study published in the Journal of
Experimental Psychology suggests. Indeed, the research
found that a mere 2.8 second interruption more than doubled
the number of errors study participants -- 300 undergraduate
students -- made when asked to recall precisely where they
were in a sequence of tasks.

"This contextual jitter— being taken out of the moment and landed
back in a slightly different place may be why even momentary
interruptions can seem jarring when they occur during a
cognitively engaging activity," the authors speculate.

It's no wonder focused productivity is hard to achieve. We are
constantly interrupted multiple times a day by a ringing phone, a
Twitter update, an incoming email and a chatty colleague…the list
goes on and on.

That said, it's not impossible to focus. Before chalking up a
flow state as something that happens to other people, try these
three strategies.

1. Block off "distraction free" chunks of time in your
schedule. Be it 20 minutes or an hour, be rigorous. Hide
your phone, email and Twitter feed. In fact, eliminate temptation
by blocking out the Internet altogether.

2. Identify where and when you're most naturally
productive. The majority of us can only truly focus for
an average of six hours a week, says David Rock,
co-founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute and author
of Your Brain at
Work (HarperCollins, 2009), so it's crucial that
we use the time wisely.

Most people focus best in the morning or late at night, which
means we generally aren't at our the most productive during the
typical 9-to-5 work schedule. Rock recommends identifying where
and when you focus best, then allocate your toughest tasks for
those moments -- even if that means getting some work done
outside of normal office hours. Read more:How to
Train Your Brain to Stay Focused

3.Quash your innerchild. Distraction and
procrastination are intertwined. It's rare to find one without
some trace of the other.

When we procrastinate, we're often simply succumbing to the
distractions around us, putting off work in order to feel good
now. The quickest way to break the habit? Realizing that for
many, if not most, getting started on important tasks, has
nothing to do with how we feel, says Tim Pychyl, a psychology
professor at Carleton University in Ontario, Canada, and the
author of Solving
the Procrastination Puzzle

"I don't know where we learn this, but somehow we internalize the
notion that our motivational state has to match the task at
hand," he says. "We don't feel like doing something, and we think
that's a reason."